After being told by an aide that he in fact couldn't veto Maryland's *** marriage bill, Governor Christie boarded a plane to Maryland with the intent on eating everyone in the state.

Maryland was quasi *** marriage friendly already, with it legal in D.C. and all. But I guess NJ is a wash? Maybe Snookie will campaign for *** rights for the ballot initiative they'll have in November.

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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin

I am very proud to live in Maryland right now. Last night I went to bed with a smile on my face knowing that our Governor O'Malley has promise to sign the bill one it reaches his desk.

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In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair! -ElneClare

This Post is written in Elnese, If it was an actual Post, it would make sense.

AUGUSTA -- ***-marriage advocates turned in more than enough signatures to move ahead with a citizen initiative that would allow *** and ******* couples to marry in Maine, the secretary of state's office ruled Thursday.

We had legalized same-*** marriage in 2009 but a peoples veto overturned the legislation. Supposedly, there was much big catholic money from-away channeled into Maine to seal the deal on the vote the last time around.

I'm hoping their money is busy elsewhere and unable to attend this latest battle.

Ok first thing - on Gbaji's point about power of attorney being enough - that is clearly not the case (just one example here):

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Janice Langbehn and Lisa Marie Pond and their children were on vacation in Florida when Lisa had an aneurysm. They each had granted the other power of attorney, but the Florida hospital chose not to recognize it for eight hours. For eight hours, Lisa lay dying alone in the hospital, while her spouse and children were forbidden contact with her. The usual counseling services that the hospital routinely provides for relatives of dying patients, were not offered to Lisa’s family. “Jackson Memorial social worker Defendant Frederick approached Janice and informed her that she should not expect to be provided any information on the condition of, or have the ability to be with Lisa Marie as they were in an ‘anti-*** city and state.’”

Former New York City Mayor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said Thursday evening that he was concerned that Republican stances on social issues makes the GOP look “like it isn’t a modern party.”

“I think the biggest problem right now, I think abortion you can work out… but I think the *** rights issue is a more current one right now. I think beyond all the religious and social parts, it makes the party look like it isn’t a modern party, it doesn’t understand the modern world we live in,” Giuliani said on CNN’s “OutFront.”

“Absolutely,” Giuliani added, when host Erin Burnett asked if the Republican Party’s positions on social issues could lead to the rise of a third party.

Giuliani, who ran for president in 2008, said that he was worried about how the Republican Party could appeal to more socially-moderate voters in the Northeast.

“I’m concerned about how do we get back the Northeast as a voting block when we seem to be not modern enough on social issues,” the former mayor said.

The national conversation has shifted remarkably in recent weeks towards social issues, such as *** marriage, public contraception funding, contraception insurance mandates and mandatory sonograms before abortion.

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

Former New York City Mayor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said Thursday evening that he was concerned that Republican stances on social issues makes the GOP look “like it isn’t a modern party.”

“I think the biggest problem right now, I think abortion you can work out… but I think the *** rights issue is a more current one right now. I think beyond all the religious and social parts, it makes the party look like it isn’t a modern party, it doesn’t understand the modern world we live in,” Giuliani said on CNN’s “OutFront.”

This is what it looks like when I one-up you...

Quote:

"I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are."

-- Jeb Bush, quoted by Fox News, on the rhetoric of the Republican presidential candidates

I saw that one this morning as well. I loved Jeb's "used to be a conservative" line.

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lolgaxe wrote:

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

As same-*** marriage supporters celebrate victories in Washington and Maryland this month, they are keeping a wary eye on New Hampshire, where lawmakers may soon vote to repeal the state’s two-year-old law allowing *** couples to wed.

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

I know what a primary source is. I also know that what you're asking for has nothing to do with what you normally get from a primary source.

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No wonder you have such a terrible grasp of history, your teachers clearly sucked.

That's funny. It really really is. I always love it when someone who clearly doesn't grasp the concept of what he's discussion attempts to tell someone who does (that's me, btw) that he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's not "fall on the floor" funny, but still amusing as ****.

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A primary source is one that goes to the root of the problem. Do I have to define root for you too? If you are discussing how literature has changed over a period of 100 years, the actual pieces of literature are your primary source.

Yup. And if we want to know *what* that literary source said, that would be the use of such a primary source. But that would not be where we'd go for *why*. You do understand that you're asking me to prove why a law was passed, and not what the law says.

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Literary critiques might be a secondary source.

Yup. And that's where you'd learn "why" something was written, or even what it meant. Do you see how anything beyond the literal words that are physically written on the page cannot ever be determined by going to a "primary source"? Of course, anyone who actually understood the concept of a primary source, would know this. But you don't. I do though.

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If you are discussing how literary critique had changed, then those critiques would be primary sources (and scholarly articles on these changes, or citing changes, would be secondary sources).

Yup. You're almost there.

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You are making a claim that these laws and benefits were established for a specific reason. A primary source goes back to the very root of those laws and benefits. A primary source might be text from the law, text from the court that passed the law (on it, obviously), content from speeches made concerning the law (by those who PASSED it or proposed it), house debates on it, etc.

Correct. And if laws were written by single individuals like pieces of literature, we could have primary sources of the reasons *why* they were written with the words they contained. But since they aren't, then all such writings are secondary sources. They must be. When Jefferson wrote his bit about the "wall of separation" between church and state, that cannot be considered a primary source for what the 1st amendment means, can it? It's only and always a secondary source. It's one person's opinion about what that amendment means. An important opinion, certainly, but not primary because nothing other than the actual words in the law can *ever* be considered a primary source.

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Opinion pieces published in newspapers at the time would not be primary sources. Opinion pieces published now definitely aren't.

Yup. But what you're demanding can only be found in the equivalent of opinion pieces written at the time, or written after that time. There is no primary source for *why* a law is written. The closest we can come is the incredibly rare occasion in which the body of the law itself contains a detailed reason. And even then, it's subject to interpretation, right? Consider the following: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Notice how the first part is an explanation of why this particular bit of law exists? It's as primary a source of "why" that can ever possibly exist for a law, right?

Get back to me when everyone agrees on what the first clause of that amendment actually means. Then get back to me when we agree on what separation of church and state means. Or any of a hundred other legal concepts.

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It's an incredibly simple concept. A primary source gives you a primary account of what you are studying.

And only the most simple minds think that this works in the world of law and politics. It's *all* opinion. It's all interpretation. There is no single primary source that tells us exactly what a law means, much less why it was passed. If there was, there'd kinda be no need for a Supreme Court, would there?

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And are you seriously going to deny that a source from the "Catholic Defense" blog, or the Marriage Law Foundation ("to defend and protect marriage between a husband and wife") aren't biased.

Of course not. The difference between you and I is that I understand that *all* sources which express an opinion about why a law is passed will be biased. You (and to be fair a lot of liberals based on the frequency with which this particular demand for sources of opinions is raised) labor under the absurd belief that there's some magical authoritarian source of all information which can tell us who is right and who is wrong. But in the case of interpreting the law, or determining why laws are written, there isn't. There can't be. You're delusional if you think there is.

What's so funny about this is that you also can't provide any "primary source" showing that the laws were written for some other reason anyway. But that lack does not prevent you from insisting that if I can't find one that supports my position that I must be wrong and you must be right. You can't apply the same logic to your own position. It's like a blind spot or something. If you can't do the same thing you're demanding that the other side do, then the fact the other guy can't do it never proves you right or him wrong. It means that you're asking for something that is meaningless (or nonhelpful) to the argument at hand.

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If your point is obvious, is infallible, is so definitely true, then you should have no issues whatsoever in providing us with documents from the time of establishment that these laws/benefits were created for the reasons you describe.

I can't provide you with anything you would accept as an unbiased, let alone primary, source. And you can't do so either. So how about we accept that any source will be biased, and non-primary, and move on?

The best we can do is look at the primary source (the laws themselves) and ask the question "what does this do?". Then we can ask "Why would someone want to do what this law does?". That's what I've done, and which is the proper way to approach this. And as I've repeatedly stated, despite constant insistence that I'm wrong, not one person has yet produced a counter explanation. Why do *you* think that the government created all those benefits and limited them in the way they did?

If you can't answer that question yourself, then you somewhat lose the grounds to question my answer. Try providing an alternative and arguing why your alternative is better than mine. Failing that, you lose. That's how arguments are supposed to work, right? The guy with the best explanation wins. I have one. You don't. Therefore, I win by default.

Right? I don't even know how to argue against this. It's like trying to explain logic to someone who willfully refuses to acknowledge the value of it.

So I'll settle with this:

Gbaji. Laws are created for very specific reasons, and those reasons are ALWAYS canvassed in debates before their passing. They are almost always stated in the manuscripts themselves. Furthermore, because of the nature of democratic government, when laws are proposed they are specifically in response to some aspect of the system that they feel needs amending.

These may be found in opinion pieces, but to hold that anything in an opinion piece about said law refers to actual aspects of it is completely invalid. Only these debates and documents may actually describe the reasons for which a law was put to the vote and passed. Public or social responses to the law is a completely different issue.

It's incredibly poor scholarship to use editorials for historical study, if the purpose of your argument is to discuss legislative motivations. (Small caveat--such editorials ARE useful if written by someone involved in said vote, particularly if they proposed the bill).

If you want to argue that marriage benefits led to an increase in the relative value of marriage among the American public following this legislation, then editorials may actually be valid primary sources. But if you want to argue that they were INTENDED to facilitate such a change, you need to look at documents specifically relating to the intention of the legislators.

And for it to be a PRIMARY source, it needs to be a PRIMARY account of it. The account of someone not in attendance or a part of the legislative processes that led to the laws' passing cannot be a primary account of them.

[EDIT]

Oh, and here's a literary critique for you: Glenn Beck's book, "Being George Washington" is a piece of revisionist history that, in no way, truly captures the reality of the life of the United States' first president. It makes heavy use of baseless assumptions, and contradicts established historical fact (supported by legitimate, verifiable documents of the time). It is specifically written with a political motive, and makes no attempt to prevent affiliation from coloring the account. It is presented as a non-fiction source, but is in reality no better than a piece of historical fiction. Should it have been properly labeled, it's other flaws could be forgiven (assuming the reader doesn't demand authors make every attempt to remain as faithful to the historical narrative as possible), but it is truly far too biased and falsified to be considered a piece of legitimate historical academia.

I'm betting you won't agree with much of that. So explain to me why you think any other random-*** opinion piece or editorial would be a good primary source when searching for motivations of people completely unrelated to the author.

#150gbaji,
Posted:Feb 29 2012 at 5:34 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) I'm not disputing what a primary source is. I'm asking you to apply the same argument to your own position. If you can't, or wont, then your argument fails. Surely you can see this?